Sledding through the Milky Way

At the upcoming MIFF, the “Russian Premieres” program will include Viktor Shamirov’s chamber drama “Temperature of the Universe”

A movie about “ordinary things,” recognizable human experiences in one of the most unusual places on earth. The small village of Nizhny Arkhyz (Karachay-Cherkessia) is hidden in a gorge surrounded by picturesque snow-capped mountains. About a dozen buildings. Mostly astronomers and astrophysicists live here, working in an extragalactic astrophysics laboratory and observatory hidden among the mountains. The exotic place itself inspired Viktor Shamirov to create this film story. Grigory Siyatvinda plays a lonely middle-aged historian from Novosibirsk who comes here for the first time. He flew in on a winter morning for the birthday of a friend of his youth - astronomer Andrei (Anton Eldarov) as, so to speak, a surprise. Natasha (Daria Semenova), Andrei’s wife, came up with such a great idea to give her husband an unexpected gift when he returned from the conference. But the wife suggests, and the husband disposes. In general, Andrei calls from the airport - they say, don’t wait, I won’t return home: I’m confused in the feelings of old and new. And here stands Natasha, who had just given a tour of the observatory, answering questions about distant galaxies and aliens... Standing literally under blue skies next to magically beautiful mountains and a giant telescope, and suddenly something so earthly. And she starts yelling at her husband. What else can a woman do in such a disgusting situation? Screaming and crying - only in the car, because there are children at home.

Space is somewhere far away, behind the clouds, but here there is a “big second” between people, a shift in harmony. And the holiday is a birthday. And the children are waiting. We prepared a song for dad as a gift...

Here, men around a fire argue until they are hoarse about the extinction of life in just a couple of billion years. And women are more concerned about what happens in this biggest second in this tiny segment of life.

Victor Shamirov continues to study the human universe at the molecular level from the point of view of adults and children. By the way, according to the children, the dark-skinned alien Sergei is definitely an alien. This entire modest earthly story about tangled human relationships, bonds breaking and forming under the stars, was filmed with virtually no budget. The Ministry of Culture refused to finance the film. This poverty is, of course, visible in the frame. But, as always with Shamirov, the dialogue redeems a lot. The result is a recognizable, slightly theatrical Shamir talk movie about old and new friends who drink wine by the fire at a picnic while their destinies collapse.

Shamirov wrote the script together with Olga Motina-Suponeva (“The Big Second”). It seems that space is also present in the film. But unlike, say, “Nine Days of One Year” and even more so the current “Time of the First” and “Salyuts,” there is not even a hint of heroism here. Just the ordinary life of ordinary people who, yes, think about space. First of all, because it is their job. But they live with their daily problems. In general, from Shamirov’s point of view, all earthlings are a little aliens. After all, both experts in ancient times, like the historian Sergei, who understands everything about the era of the union of Alania and Byzantium, and local astronomers looking into the very distant future, cannot always answer the question of what it means to be human. Everyone is looking for the answer themselves. Maybe that’s why the words of Rybnikov’s almost children’s song, which Natasha’s son sings for his father who didn’t arrive and the alien Sergei who arrived, are so touching: “We are sledding / along the Milky Way.”

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